Streaming Media with Firefox on FreeBSD

After much testing and general messing about, I have found that the mplayer-plugin for firefox works much better than the realplayer plugin (IMHO). It not only streams typical realmedia but also streams quicktime, windows media (wmv etc) and pretty much every other type of media out there. Also, you do not need the linux binary emulation to get this working.

To get the Mplayer plugin working with Firefox on FreeBSD you need to do the following:-

Install the ports

Install the firefox port

cd /usr/ports/www/firefox/
make install

Install mplayer

cd /usr/ports/multimedia/mplayer make install

Install mplayer plugin for firefox

cd /usr/ports/www/mplayer-plugin/
make install

This port should install mplayer files into the following directory:-

/usr/X11R6/lib/browser_plugins

Once you restart Firefox you should be able to see the registered plugins by browsing to about:plugins

Test It!

Start firefox and try to stream some media – a good test is the bbc radio website which can be found here:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under firefox, freebsd, mplayer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Streaming Media with Firefox on FreeBSD”

  1. Torok says on July 29th, 2008 at 12:53 pm :

    How about firefox 3? This only works for firefox 2.

  2. admin says on July 30th, 2008 at 2:06 pm :

    Hey Torok, this is a fair point!

    I will have a play with it and post a fix…….if there is one :) .

  3. Torok says on July 30th, 2008 at 4:09 pm :

    Thanks:)

  4. Bookmarks about Streaming says on August 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 am :

    [...] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by stayzfressh on July 18, 2008 Streaming Media with Firefox on FreeBSD http://www.ubergeek.co.uk/blog/2008/07/realplayer-mplayer-firefox-freebsd-howto/ – bookmarked by 1 [...]

  5. Richard Baker says on April 2nd, 2010 at 8:56 pm :

    Very informing post. If you need to listen to BBC Radio on the iPhone – I strongly recommend BBC Streams – it is easily the best way to listen to BBC Radio on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and it’s free at BBCStreams.com.

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